Black in Placed PDFs converting to 4c

Started by Slappy, July 12, 2017, 10:43:15 AM

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mattbeals

Yes, but that's the blending space. The objects are device gray. If you're flattening transpancies then this will be a problem. If you aren't flattening, which you shouldn't, then it shouldn't be a problem.
Matt Beals

Everything I say is my own personal opinion and has nothing to do with my employer or their views.

Joe

The PDF's are showing up as 4 color black just by placing them into InDesign. And his PDF's do the same for me. But PDF's I have here aren't doing it. Doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm still blaming it on the grayscale PDF's coming out of Word 2013.
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mattbeals

Quote from: Joe on July 12, 2017, 08:09:59 PMThe PDF's are showing up as 4 color black just by placing them into InDesign. And his PDF's do the same for me. But PDF's I have here aren't doing it. Doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm still blaming it on the grayscale PDF's coming out of Word 2013.

They're device gray. There's a conversion going on somewhere that shouldn't be occurring.
Matt Beals

Everything I say is my own personal opinion and has nothing to do with my employer or their views.

Joe

Exactly. They are gray in Acrobat but once you just place them in InDesign document they are no longer gray. Weird.
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The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

Joe

Testing with one of the grayscale pages. If you flatten the page with Acrobat's flattener it ends up with two images that are tagged with ICC profiles (see attached screen grabs). If you place the flattened PDF in Indy everything is gray except those two images tagged with the ICC profile. So if you run a convert to gray action on it and then place it in Indy everything is gray. I still contend that Word is doing something weird to the PDF.
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The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

mattbeals

Why flatten it anywhere?
Change the blending space from RGB to device cmyk or device gray. Gray would be the appropriate space.
Matt Beals

Everything I say is my own personal opinion and has nothing to do with my employer or their views.

Farabomb

I think I'm seeing something like his too but with a dash of boned fonts as well. We're doing an imprint on masters for an event where there are daily standing changes. We get the files (on time no less) at night and we have to flip it ASAP. I have a prepress guy in front of me handing the files for layout. He knows what he's doing and when he places the file, it goes to 4c black on output. It's no big deal for me as I have a convert to black and it's a 1c imprint. I'll see if I can get my hands on the original files and see what program puked them out.

And because of this damn event I can't go to my track event this weekend.  :cry:
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Joe

Quote from: mattbeals on July 12, 2017, 11:09:32 PMWhy flatten it anywhere?
Change the blending space from RGB to device cmyk or device gray. Gray would be the appropriate space.

Just tried it for testing Matt. I am the last person on the planet that wants to flatten a PDF. And I did change the blending space. It works for the 4 color files but not those gray PDF's from Word.
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

Joe

Quote from: Farabomb on July 13, 2017, 06:49:48 AMI think I'm seeing something like his too but with a dash of boned fonts as well. We're doing an imprint on masters for an event where there are daily standing changes. We get the files (on time no less) at night and we have to flip it ASAP. I have a prepress guy in front of me handing the files for layout. He knows what he's doing and when he places the file, it goes to 4c black on output. It's no big deal for me as I have a convert to black and it's a 1c imprint. I'll see if I can get my hands on the original files and see what program puked them out.

And because of this damn event I can't go to my track event this weekend.  :cry:

If you view the seps in Indy with Slappy's files they go 4 color when you place them before you even get to outputting them.
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

Slappy

Quote from: Joe on July 12, 2017, 10:52:54 PMTesting with one of the grayscale pages. If you flatten the page with Acrobat's flattener it ends up with two images that are tagged with ICC profiles (see attached screen grabs). If you place the flattened PDF in Indy everything is gray except those two images tagged with the ICC profile. So if you run a convert to gray action on it and then place it in Indy everything is gray. I still contend that Word is doing something weird to the PDF.
I'd almost concur, except it's happening with PDFs from several creators. That BC is a PDFlib, I had an AI file (granted, was RGB initially) placed last week or so that RIP'd without ANY black. It was all converted, horribly, to CMY. I had to *gasp* distill that bitch to get a clean PDF out. It's maddening.

Another reason I'm heavily lobbying to get XMF in here, stop dicking with files this way & just Do It Rightâ„¢.
A little diddie 'bout black 'n cyan...two reflective colors doin' the best they can.

Joe

The odd thing about the ones from Word is Output Preview only shows a black separation. I don't think I've ever seen a PDF that doesn't show CMYK seps in Output Preview even though everything is gray.
Mac OS Sonoma 14.2.1 (c) | (retired)

The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

Joe

On the gray PDF's from Word and the BC's....if I 'Analyze and Fix' with the Acrobat Preflight "Convert to PDF/X-4 (SWOP)" and have it create a new PDF and I place that into InDesign the the blacks stay black only. That preflight won't actually make it a PDF-X4 because of file issues but it at least fixes it so your blacks don't go 4C.

Here is what the preflight says after it runs and creates the new file:
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The seven ages of man: spills, drills, thrills, bills, ills, pills and wills.

Possum

Dumb question, probably, but would that "appearance of black" setting in Indy have anything to do with it? Don't know how it affects PDFs.
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